Colombia Elections 2024: Viral Video Claims Fingerprint Scanners Rigged to Favor Candidates
A video claiming that fingerprint scanners in Colombian voting machines are pre-programmed to automatically count votes for a specific candidate is circulating rapidly on social media, sparking fears of widespread election fraud. The video, which has amassed over 2 million views on TikTok, shows a man allegedly demonstrating this "rigging" on a mock voting machine. However, fact-checkers have debunked the claim. The video is a digitally altered clip from a 2019 cybersecurity conference in Brazil, where researchers showed a potential vulnerability on a non-certified device. The Colombian National Civil Registry confirms that all 114,000 voting machines used in the 2024 elections undergo rigorous tamper-proof testing and are not connected to the internet, making mass manipulation via fingerprint scanners impossible. This rumor is false and part of a coordinated disinformation campaign aimed at undermining electoral confidence.